Feature:

Amazon accelerates embedded development with mobile AWS initiatives

The development
of embedded devices has become the top priority of many enterprise organizations, but it also
poses a great challenge in terms of people, tools and technology. Fortunately, the development of
embedded devices can be greatly accelerated by leveraging Amazon's AWS mobile initiatives. Amazon
Web Services (AWS) have become well established in the web application development, testing and
deployment field, so it’s not surprising that the cloud giant is addressing mobile
and embedded device development as the next big market. This is an especially timely move since
more and more enterprises are embracing a mobile
first strategy for application development. Here’s a broad overview of where
AWS is today, along with a review of some of the most recently added features and predictions
for the future.

When hiring new talent, the Amazon mobile team wants a rock
star with a Top 25 app on the resume.

Jason Tee, Enterprise Software Architect

What does AWS offer mobile developers?

At the most basic level, AWS provides SDKs for bothiOS
and Android in the mobile space. For Android in particular, Java developers may be interested
in the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse, "a plug-in for the Eclipse Java IDE that makes it easier for
developers to develop, deploy, and debug Java applications using Amazon Web Services." Sincehybrid
apps with Java and HTML5 are likely to gain more traction in the foreseeable future, it’s a
smart move to provide support for this developer group.

Updates enhance AWS mobile SDKs

New versions of the SDKs
for Android and iOS were released in May of 2013. One of the major updates is the addition of
support for web identity federation to the AWS Security Token Service. A new API allows
cloud-backed mobile apps to authenticate using public identity providers including Facebook,
Google, and Login with Amazon. This will provide a new way to issue temporary security
credentials so developers have less administrative responsibility for maintaining backend services.
The web identity federation can be combined with policy variables to
tightly restrict and compartmentalize access within a developer’s account.

The Amazon
Elastic Transcoder client has also been improved with tools to make it easier for developers to
work with video. Now, they can encode and deliver content to a broader array of video-capable
mobile devices. Since everyone from individual app developers to large enterprises are becoming
more multi-media savvy and mobile device types are proliferating, this is a timely enhancement.
Your video content is only as good as your ability to make it available to end users.

Community matters for mobile on AWS

AWS is working hard to communicate with the developer community via the mobile AWS blog. Perhaps more important, the company is also
pushing to foster as much crosstalk as possible on its mobile developer forum. In some situations,
answers to newbie questions just turn into an advertisement for AWS offerings. However, some of the
advice is pretty good. For example, a recent poster asked how to force an HTTP protocol for
putObject to reduce the time for a call. Fast response times are, of course, the Holy Grail for
mobile apps. But that doesn’t mean security can be sacrificed.

The question received a fast response, within just a day, that gave several reasons for keeping
the SDK’s default HTTPS setting in place. The responder pointed out that even if the content being
uploaded was headed to a public bucket and not really sensitive, there could still be concerns
surrounding the transaction type itself. The DNS could be spoofed, the data could be modified in
flight, or other communications could end up being affected by changing the endpoint for the SDK.
While the breakneck development pace for mobile will always be challenging, getting extra
perspective may help AWS users avoid rookie mistakes while getting the lowdown on the
corner-cutting tricks that really do work. One of the biggest time-savers is always finding out
that someone else has already tried an approach and discovered it doesn’t work.

AWS is actively seeking to expand its expertise

Much is being made of an active job posting at AWS for a mobile software development engineer.
The position is designed for someone who: "will be responsible for creating and owning world-class
production applications across major mobile platforms." The company states that a commitment to
team work, hustle, and strong communication skills are absolute requirements. When hiring new
talent, the Amazon mobile team wants a rock star with a Top 25 app on the resume.

There’s some speculation
that AWS is positioning itself for a move into the Mobile
Backend as a Service space as well. The company certainly has much of the infrastructure and
services in place to make this happen with its other offerings. Existing leaders in the MBaaS
industry are scoffing at the idea, but they are probably afraid deep down. Amazon has a way of
figuring out a way to do things bigger, better and faster. There’s just too much money in mobile
development for AWS to turn a blind eye. So, if you’re trying to figure out what skills to acquire
for your next big career move, hustle on over and learn more about mobile, and what Amazon is doing
to accelerate mobile application development.

What is your experience integrating AWS offerings with mobile development. We want to know.

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